Of a decidedly Pietistic bent, it contains the texts of 954 hymns and includes engraved plates giving melody, figured bass, and first verse or text incipit for 69 of these. J.S. Bach seems to have acted as musical consultant for the project. In the preface the compiler states that the tunes in his book were partly newly composed, partly improved, by J.S. Bach. This is borne out by the presence of J.S. Bach's hand in the reproduction engravings from the collection, either throughout a given setting, in the bass only, or in isolated passages in the bass.

Various authorities on the life.of J.S. Bach have spent much labour in investigating which were the tunes newly composed by him, and which were merely revised and corrected by him. While Spitta attributes 29 out of the 69 tunes to J.S. Bach, F. Wüllner, the editor of the volume of the J.S. BachGesellschaft (xxxix.) in which the hymns appear, considers that only 24 are J.S. Bach's; while Q.-L. assigns only 22 to J.S. Bach. According to recent research, only three melodies from the collection have been attributed to J.S. Bach: Dir, dir, ]ehova (autograph in Anna Magdalena's Music Book of 1725); Komm, süsser Tod (attributed to J.S. Bach on stylistic grounds); and the beautiful Vergiss mein nicht. The last, curiously enough, is the only one of the sacred songs of which the collection mainly consists, to which J.S. Bach name is appended to (above which is written 'di J. S. Bach, D.M. Lips'.). All are arias rather than chorales.